A system, in particular a high-voltage or medium-voltage switchgear assembly, is controlled by a distributed system control system comprising field control devices which are connected to one another via communication buses. A plant or substation control system has, for example, field control devices and an operator station, together with various communication buses and bus couplers. The field devices control, regulate, monitor and protect primary devices in the system, which carry out the actual system purpose. Primary devices are, for example, switches, drives, generators or transformers, and bus couplers connect communication buses, which have different hardware and/or protocol characteristics, so that the communication buses together form a communication network. Individual software functions in the field devices use the communication network to communicate with one another and with functional elements or program elements of the operator devices. Software functions of the field devices, that is to say program elements, which can be stored in and carried out on a field device, are referred to in the following text as control system functional elements or, for short, as control system functions. The procedure for conventional methods for configuration of these control system functions and of their communication means is as follows: the field devices and their control system functions are each configured and dimensioned using their own engineering tools. The engineering tools use models for standardized representation of control system functions, for example in accordance with IEC Standard 61850. These models comprise, in particular, field device models, control function models and communication models, that is to say Standards for description of field devices, control system functions, etc. The standardized description allows field devices from different manufacturers to be configured jointly.
Interfaces between control system functions are described by signal lists. An integration tool is used to specify the links between individual signals. This requires knowledge of the nature and method of operation of the individual control system functions, and about the construction of the switchgear assembly. This specification is complex, and is susceptible to errors.